40 



SPECIMENS OF CETACEA. 



Colour on dorsum of head and body dark steel-grey 

 or bluisli black, sides mottled with white, ventral 

 surface with large patches of silver-grey and white. 

 Length from 70 to 80 feet or upwards; dorsal fin 

 at three-fourths of length of animal, falcate ; baleen 

 black ; outer border of upper jaw with a convex 

 curve, rapidly curving inwards at the tip. 



1. Cranial cavity, cast of, from a male, 78 feet long, stranded 



at North Berwick in October 1831 : prepared by 

 Robert and Frederick Knox, and at one time in their 

 Museum. The cavity measured in vertical depth 9i 

 inches, antero-posteriorly 11 inches, and the breadth 

 was 20 inches. The cast gives the general form of 

 the Cetacean brain, the hemispheres, the rhinen- 

 cephalon, cerebellum, the medulla oblongata, and on 

 each side an irregular-shaped mass which occupied 

 the cranial cavity in the region of the meatus 

 auditorius internus. The skeleton of this whale is 

 suspended in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. 



Knox Collection, No. 23. 



2. Baleen plate, somewhat injured, from the Rorqual stranded 



at North Berwick, 1831. It shows the characteristic 

 black colour of the whalebone in B. sihhaldi, and the 

 coarse black bristles which project from the inner 

 border. Knox Collection. 



[No. 3 and the other bones to No. 8 in this Catalogue 

 are from the Great Fin Whale, a gravid female, 78 

 feet 9 inches long, stranded at Gosford Bay, Long- 

 niddry, Firth of Forth, November 1869. It was 

 purchased by an oil merchant, and towed across the 



